12.31.2005

New Year Resolutions by the Dozen

Oh no. Not resolutions. Sucks as much as "top 10 songs" or "ten biggest news stories of 2005." Like who gives a fuck? OK, to play along, here are my resolutions (post two tequila-heavy "margaritas") for Two-thousand and Six, kids:

1) Believe it or not, I resolve to be [get this] more of myself than ever. Become a brand and not for wussy TV carpenters or stuffed animals. Like I said, what brought me here keeps me here. BSUR. Will.

2) I resolve to ride bigger, scarier rollercosters. Sure, I may puke now-a-days, but let's ride 'em, Jimi. WTF?

3) Fuck! Love!

5) Get a number 4.

6) How about less contempt?

7) Oh yeah, "unbuilding"

8) Welcome to the apex -OR- this just means that there's further to go.

9) Favre Barge (r)

10) Push the "motherfucker" button.

11) Tap the adaptive unconscious, better utilize rapid cognition; rely on it, shit!

12) You honor the dead by the way you choose to live your life after they're gone.

12.29.2005

Life's Greatest Gift

"I read your poem - I've always thought death was life's greatest gift. If things were always great I wouldn't think that but since they're not, at least things won't be horrible forever. I've often thought about the worst situations people have been in, like excruciating torture, or being stuck in some terrible place with no escape. The thought of these situations lasting indefinitely, if we didn't die, is one of the worst things I can think of. "

- BDW, Florida

My New Jacket

[note: I suppose it's officially blogging when you're (oh, shit, "I'm") writing about a fucking jacket, somebody please kill me]

Just purchased a new jacket. Ostensibly it's a snowboarding jacket. But, I'm not planning to go out boarding any time soon – those days are a little bit behind me, but I might, you never know. I just thought it looked good (light brown herringbone), fit well, and I liked the sherpa fleece lining (as opposed to, say, polyester "fleece") - it's like hugging a lamb...

I fully believe that my new jacket will keep me dry and warm, it has a good hood (a fulltime Contour™ hood even). I was looking for an alternative to lugging an umbrella around everywhere I go and as Rich saw in SF; I was desperately in need of “gear.” This very nice jacket has channels for headphone wiring too. Thermacore insulation, taped seams, Storm-lite (r) shell, and Mesh-lined Pit Zips™ are a bonus. This is fairly serious jacket. By an important snow gear manufacturer – on that’s been around for a long time. Kind of the old, wise, experienced guy gear manufacturer. You know...expensive and such, but you get what you pay for in this case. It’s not for the snow kiddies.

You see, I’m old and can go out and purchase a fairly serious jacket from time to time. It’s not like I’m a clotheshorse (or clothes-whore or anything). I’ll probably never fully utilize the Tear-Open Goggle Pocket even.

Anyway, the point is, I get back to my office and I'm reading the book and I discover the model is called "Party Jacket." OK, hadn't noticed that. Reading further, I note that this jacket actually somehow “BULT TO RAGE.” Here’s the text from the feature list page:

“Whether you're raging the mountain or killing brain cells with your bros, the Party jacket puts a new spin on style. The pinstriped herringbone fabric offers insane strength, waterproofing and breathability to keep you warm and dry. We also packed the Party with all the critical features -- dual 40 oz. pockets, a Stash Pocket™ and of course, the 420 pocket.”

Uh, OK. Note: I really like that 1) the Stash Pocket is a trademark of Burton, 2) they write, "of course" with regard to the 420 pocket, and 2) my new jacket has pockets for not one 40 oz bottle of malt liquor, it has the capacity for two bottles of malt liquor. 420 stash and 80 oz of malted liquor. Oh my damn!

So I look around my new jacket no fucking foolin’, there's this clever inner, inner pocket and in this inner, inner pocket is a little zip-lock plastic pouch (about the size of an old lady's change purse). Oh my! No kidding around with my new very serious jacket.

So, I suppose I’ll maintain my waning street cred by wearing my new jacket around although I’m a bit partied out by just looking at it on my coat rack in my office.

Rage on! Crunk by lunch.

Two Birds of a Peapod Feather




12.28.2005

12.27.2005

The Genius of Sistine & Reeoch

Today's NY Times

"The Roman Catholic Church is formulating its position on a traditional belief about what happens to babies who die without baptism."

Read it for yourself.

WTF?

America and Americans

Why Does It Have To Make Sense?

Ok, I'll admit, living a life for Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Love is completely flighty in these modern* times, if not juvenile (if not asinine), but so what? What's the purpose of life anyhow? *[besides the modern internal combustion motor-car will kills us anyway]

What's the problem with having aspirations that are not entirely practical? So what? Who's to judge? Who's to care?

There are rules. Not policy or regulation, I'm not talking about that, but absolute rules. Universal rules, mathematical rules, irrefutable rules. So, why not live by rule? The rule of life rather than some trumped-up interpretation of what is right and what is wrong...the structure is already there.

"I hate having these feelings that are usually reserved for grumpy old people so young," so I won't. Stripped of all context, of course it's more comforting than boring...but, we have evolved. Or, better put, we must evolve.

It's all a matter of finding the right balance, the right mix, the right formula. I'm not advocating anarchy, socialism, religion,or anything but giving yourself a moment to think about the whys.

That's all I'm sayin'. Evolution doesn't have to mean "better" - just "different" sometimes.

For now.

12.25.2005

Home Is Where The Art Is






















Christmas (Sage) Advise From A Good Old Friend

"...think - life is to be lived...and in doing so...you are always in perilous risk of losing everything even if you do nothing...maybe especially if you do nothing..."

12.22.2005

Heaven and the Afterlife

Good question
Should I believe
If there is an afterlife
Heaven or whatnot

My only problem is
I have no desire for
Eternal life
I'm too tired

The horror of having
"All this" for ever
And ever is
A bit much to bear

But if anyone
Can convince me
That a belief has merit
It is you

One Safe Man

Reality

From "Jay" via "Dave"

12.21.2005

They Die In Threes

Reflections on “Personal Greatness”

Sometimes
When I am reflecting
Upon all that is me
And that twinge of
“Personal Greatness”
Begins to seep in
I laugh and I am humble

What is unknown to most
Friends and lovers of
The twenty-first century
Is the version of [me]
Brimming with confidence acidic
With assurance absolute
And a veritable sexuality raw and overwhelming

The beasts have never been tamed – yet
Although the pacing has become more
Deliberate and full of spiritual neediness
The fears of emptiness compete (fairly)
With anticipations of new satisfactions
And all roads ahead
While just as curvaceous are – at least – paved now

Notions of downfall
Questions regarding motivation
And allegations of madness
Are hereby and categorically rejected
At this point in the story
Character development and twists of plot
Are long past and a bit cliché

Sometimes
When I am reflecting
Upon all that is me
And that twinge of
“Personal Greatness”
Begins to seep in
I sit back and enjoy the ride


The Omens at Christmas

Inherent in the collective fragmentation
Of mainstream society during the “Christmas Season”
Is a slight/sleight weakening of the
Communal defenses in our societal fabric

Just enough for the perceptive
And the intuitive to sneak a peek
Into the middlespaces of the future
The omens at Christmas are the signals of change

Patterns and schema of past and present
Mesh into multi-dimensional imagings of clarity
Reality and fantasy and dream and premonition
Sum as atlas of personal betterment

As others scurry to purchase or scramble to mail
I observe and analyze the intelligence from the very front row
And since few are watching back or acting accordingly
My duck blind disappears into the noise

Looking out I can see in
I already know what happens next
Like déjà vu in a recurring dream
Filmstrips spliced into infinite loops

All blessings are curses
There is no heaven only living hells
So Merry Christmas to all
And to all a good life


The First Day of Winter

Today is the first day of winter
And the slow downward ride is complete

Shortest day and longest night
Both cold and lonely for the restless and the deprived

Shortest day and longest night
Both productive and penetrating for the inspired and those affected

The excitement for the uphill climb
Fills me with energies of endless possibility

If we again survive these battles
Butter- dragon- and fireflies will fascinate again

12.20.2005

Art & Fear: In Five Parts

Art & Fear: Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking: Bayles & Orland

1) "Your work may provide clear evidence that you are different, that you are alone. After all, artists themselves rarely serve as role models of normalcy.... Just how unintelligible your art - or you - appear to others may be something you don't really want to confront, at least not all that quickly."

2) "The flawless creature wouldn't need to make art...our flaws and weaknesses, while often obstacles to getting our work done, are a source of strength as well. Something about making art has to do with overcoming things, giving us a clear opportunity for doing things in ways we have always known we should do them."

3) "The sobering truth is that the disinterest of others hardly ever reflects a gulf in vision. In fact there's generally no good reason why others should care about most of any one artist's work. The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars...even the failed pieces are essential."

4) "In following the path of your heart, the chances are that your work will not be understandable to others. At least not immediately, and not to a wide audience.... No wonder artists so often harbor a depressing sense that their work is going downhill: at any given moment the older work is always more attractive, always better understood."

5) "Making art now means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither audience nor reward. Making the work you want to make means setting aside these doubts so that you may see clearly what you have done, and thereby see where to go next. Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself. This is not the Age of Faith, Truth and Certainty."

[amen]

Corporate Branding

Slate: Today: Pants Pants Revolution: Seth Stevenson

"Side note: I was thinking about the fact that Monica Lewinsky's famous blue dress came from the Gap. That was back in the mid-1990s—rosier days for the company. Can you imagine a White House intern now—a well-off woman from Beverly Hills who considers herself fashion-forward—buying a dress from the Gap? I can't. Maybe Banana Republic. It's just a sign of how badly things have gone for the brand:

They can't even get world leaders to ejaculate on their clothes anymore."

12.19.2005

Google Update

Today 5:11 pm (5 hours ago)

"Rigoberto Alpizar" count:
213,000

and,

"Fred McJewelry" (also "Fred McJewelry" + "Rigoberto Alpizar") count:
1

Thank Florida for this trivia.

From September

Heightened senses of awareness
Paranoia mediated by instincts

The depths are still frightening
Drill-down to situations not of our control
Or, maybe it's really getting scarier yet, the world

Or maybe experience teaches
Circumstances change perspectives
Evolution occurs regardless

Imagination, being what it is, has
Powerful effects on perceptions
And vice versa

The nature of things
You know, stuff, you know

Clarity is a motherfucker
Befuddling is likewise

Sharp pointy things
Running amok

Distillation is key
Simpler elemental thinking

On Boredom (plus reply and reply to reply)

ORIGINAL POST:

"The life of the creative [person] is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes."

-Susan Sontag

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom."

-Thomas Carlyle


REPLY (from Berkeley):

Interesting that you post those quotes about boredom. Just last night I was thinking about boredom.

I think people who complain that life was better when they were kids forget the crushing boredom that came along with being a kid. I'm not complaining about my childhood. It was plenty fine, but it doesn't compare to being an adult.

Now, I'll admit that I'm lucky when it comes to what I have and don't have as an adult. But here is a small list of things that are better about being and adult, all of which go along way toward fending off boredom.

-I can have sex
-I can get stoned
(I don't really need to go on, but I will)
-I can drive around
-I can walk around
-I can go away
-I can go get a steak or mashed potatoes or ice cream

Basically, I control my own schedule and activities. Oh, and I have money to do stuff.

That's what's better about being an adult. Not so much suffocating boredom.


REPLY TO REPLY:

Yeah, agreed. I can do anything I damn well please. Life's not as big of a mystery as many people make it out to be. With a little control, you can have a whole lot of fun. Plus, as an adult I can listen to music with warning labels.

When I Agree With These Guys...

...You know something is terribly wrong:

"As Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, said over the weekend: "Even in a time of war, you have to follow the process, because that is what a democracy is all about: a process." Graham said he couldn't think of any legal justification for making an end-run on FISA. Another Republican, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, proclaimed Bush's actions "wrong, clearly and categorically wrong.""

12.18.2005

Oy Vey! My New Menorah

What? You thought I was gonna go cheap?

Damn!

I Know That Face

Sometimes you see a face in a crowd
A crowd dense with people with personal objectives
But one face catches your eye
Eyes locked upon eyes
From across a giant hall or boulevard

And suddenly you realize that the face
The face is yours
You have stepped outside of yourself
For just a moment
And you see your own face in the throng

Perhaps it is not your face after all
But one so familiar that it feels that you own it
Lover or loved-one a face intimate with knowledge
The eyes pull the eyes plead the expression commands
And it strikes you what the face means

12.17.2005

L'il Neice Sez Thzankz

Taste

Sucree

Salé

The sweet and the savory.

12.16.2005

12.15.2005

DMK RIP

I am beginning to believe
[And "beginning" is the key word]
Am beginning to feel
That one of two things, or perhaps both
Are beginning to happen here

If, firstly, change is pending
Then notions a-stirring are consistent
With the omens and premonitions
Sparking the neurons and mixing the
Potions endocrine

If, secondly, and as succinctly stated
By the prince of otters
"Something big is about to happen"
Then that, too, probably helps complete
The complex psychic universal jigsaw puzzle

Of course
This journey will NOT be without some turbulence

12.14.2005

Now For Something Lighter

Roses are red
Turtles are green
This is the worst fucking poem
That you've ever seen

A Public Service Message

The Long Ride Into Winter - Part II

And now we enter that period
Of the horrible, horrible blackness
The wintertime again

Thoughts turning inward and losing signal
Broken and unloved
All over and over again

When the sun shines
I do feel the warmth on my hands and face
But it is cloudy today – tomorrow

So ashamed of all I have built
And all I have aspired to be
Lying in ruins created by those demons

And pondering options
Of the face-saving exits
However transparent or unholy

Happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction
Cannot ever be dependent
Upon other or others

We have to fill our own shoes
Somewhere karma became a radical new philosophy
For yuppies and television producers

Laid bare with guts exposed like
Chipper the happy chipmunk
Dead in the road for all the children to poke at

Maybe happy is not a place to be after all
But the hell of atheists and artists
That we sold our souls to become

12.13.2005

Favorite Pictures of 2005 - Now Up

Uh, my '05 best pics are up on middlespace.

Also see, 2002 and 2003. 2004 SUCKS! Do not look (I have to re-pic '04 someday).

Uh, thanks and stuff.

-me

12.12.2005

One Dozen Haiku - $3.99

Magic happenings
Forced friction fatalities
Encounters splendid

Graduation peers
Exchanging poetry notes
Or lunch on Wednesdays

Of Chinese takeout
Television dinner tray
Clouds of orange and white

Roaring of dragons
Gasoline and grass cuttings
Boxes from grandma

Perceptions ingrained
Notions systemic of norms
Without reference cues

The sounds from the depths
When the salmon swim upstream
Will drown out rivers

Hands and feet and backs
The parts that equal the wholes
Arranged like photos

Uncompromising
Positions of no return
Triplet eighth note birds

Amazing powers
Restraint and disciplined will
Ability thoughts

Pinky chaperone
Potential satisfaction
Blissfully enveloping

The curator’s job
Assist artists find their voice
Then tuck them in bed

When the ending comes
Weighty burdens of dying
Lift like springtime morn

12.10.2005

Else

One has to laugh
at how ridiculous
the world around us
has become

else we'd cry
our eyes out

Oh My Damn, By the Milligram!

050 mg - OK, that's a start
100 mg - Ummm, that's the right part

125 mg - Oh, my you're high
150 mg - Was that a fly went by?

175 mg - Feelin' now kind of sick
200 mg - Can't breathe well, how 'bout a kick?

225 mg - You're the king of leisure
250 mg - Goddamn, that's a seizure

Oh, Rigoberto, You Crazy Fucker

12/10/5 - 11:37 a.m.

"Rigoberto Alpizar" Google count: 55,600

12/9/5 - 11:32 a.m.

"Rigoberto Alpizar" Google count: 21,600


12/7/5 - 5:50 p.m.

"Rigoberto Alpizar" Google count: 1
From Hermann Hesse ROSSHALDE

"...And with relish he breathed the heady air of art, the bitter joy of the creator who must give himself till he stands on the brink of annihilation, and can find the sacred happiness of freedom only in an iron discipline that checks all caprice and gains moments of fulfillment only through ascetic obedience to his sense of truth."

Woof!

12.09.2005

I Didn't Make The Rules

Téodor on Blog Quality Bar

"(don't you just love how since the Blog Quality Bar has been set so low, I can mention this entirely without a segue, and it will seem like high literature simply because there are no misspellings and you can't tell which band I'm listening to?)"

-Téodor/Onstad

Google Culture

12/9/5 - 11:32 a.m.

"Rigoberto Alpizar" Google count: 21,600


12/7/5 - 5:50 p.m.

"Rigoberto Alpizar" Google count: 1

12.08.2005

Reflection on Culture

gargoyles from their pillars watch the city
looking down form arches unobserved
gothic and grotesque creations spying from the buttresses
peering in the darkness
for the sign to begin.
look for them while claws still grip the walls;
talons itch for flesh of each
and beaks for blood of all.
listen for their screeches.
citizens will dread the streets
when gargoyles wild assault the rich
and caryatids cast their burdens
stone by stone upon the poor.

Alice 9/75

12.07.2005

12/7/5 - 5:50 p.m.

"Rigoberto Alpizar" Google count: 1


Thanks to Fred McJewelry

The Long Ride Into Winter - Part I


Pic by The Bren

12.05.2005

Air Poetry

I Have Been in The Attic Again

After looking around in the attic for a bit
And at all the gifts of the future
Decisions remain unresolved
Answers to questions that shape lives
Might prove far too difficult in the end

Worse by far
Is the pain we create for ourselves
Than that inflicted
By knocks or falls or collisions into things

We have become our own most feared predator
And cannot help our own torment
Or that in which we inflict upon others
Often those most close

Alas it has come the time to
Deliberately and diligently
Shift direction and change course [yawn] again
Towards projects happy for all [hurray]

Perhaps we can build ladders
Or hot air balloons or
Something to rescue us from our
Dank lonely pits

Like Angels

Like angels or some sort of cadre of full-grown lady-elves
Helpful and caring for whim necessity and desire

Break down to rebuild
Deconstruct to reconstruct
Stop to start
Die to live

Our miseries are trivial in context(s) wide
Selfish hoarding of feelings good
While holding most humans at - at least - arm's length
God's absence only exacerbates our solitude

One of each
Something and more for all
They lock the doors and steep the tea

But not before I surrender to their modest query
Will it be dinner tonight or only dessert?

Mutual Act Appreciation Day

And the arts are good out west, I report
And they were all asking: what will your next project be?
As the number one question, the answers were wholly insufficient
For them - for me

Perhaps the better question would have been - once we stripped away the unessentials:

What have we?

Or

What are we?

Or

Who are we?

Or, just

Why?

Like a cat on its seventh life
(and without intention of getting into a "heaven")
Perhaps the defenses should activate more acutely
Else the carelessness in which we choose
Becomes our ultimate choice

The Fragile World of The People Who Make The Art (and, the people who love them)

As relieving as it is for the tribe to care for you for a few days
It is equally or more frightening to return to caring for yourself

To our realities and responsibilities
(Even our most idolized citizens must visit the toilet on occasion)

If reinvigoration does not reinvigorate or resetting does not reset
Then the changes are permanent and the grind can become intolerable

Sometimes when the actual tears dry the internal sobbing only begins
Leading becomes following again

12.04.2005